An appeals court upheld a man’s 70-year sentence for a 2017 home invasion in Zion where he was found guilty of stabbing a man 20 times and raping a woman.
Lake County Circuit Judge Mark Levitt found D’Javon Hudson, 29, of Zion, guilty in July 2021 of attempted murder, aggravated criminal sexual assault, home invasion, aggravated battery and violation of an order of protection.
Four of the charges are Class X offenses, which carry a mandatory sentencing range of six to 30 years in prison.
Levitt sentenced Hudson to 70 years in prison.
The charges stem from an incident that the Zion Police Department was called to just after midnight on September 21, 2017, at an apartment in the 2700 block of Galilee Avenue.
Officers found a Zion man with multiple stab wounds to the neck, chest and abdomen.
Prosecutors said Hudson entered through a window of the apartment and attacked the man, who was asleep in bed, with a knife.
Officials said he was stabbed more than 20 times.
Hudson then sexually assaulted a woman who was inside the apartment. The male victim was transported to a local hospital in critical condition.
Hudson was arrested after being found hiding above a closet inside the apartment. The knife used in the attack was recovered at the home.
The male victim survived his injuries and testified at Hudson’s trial.
Levitt concluded that both the evidence in the case and the state’s witnesses proved the charges beyond any reasonable doubt.
“The events of that terrible night in 2017 finally ended in a just verdict today,” Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said following the trial.
Hudson appealed his case to the Appellate Court of Illinois Second District.
He claimed that the trial court committed plain error when it denied his request to allow a private attorney serve as standby counsel while Hudson represented himself.
Hudson made numerous requests to discharge his attorney and then reinstate his attorney before the case went to trial.
The appeals court issued an order finding that the trial court did not commit error in denying Hudson’s request.
“Second, any error in the denial of standby counsel was not plain error, because the evidence was not closely balanced, and the claimed error was not structural,” the court said in its ruling late last month.
Hudson is projected to be paroled from the Illinois Department of Corrections in March 2078.